Track AI Referrals (humans clicking from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude…)
AI referrals are people who click a citation inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Copilot or similar — not the bots. Since the May 13, 2026 GA4 release, Google auto-classifies these visits in a native 'AI Assistant' channel, so most properties no longer need custom regex or GTM. This guide shows the native path first, with fallbacks for older properties and edge cases.
GA4 native AI Assistant channel (recommended, May 2026+)
Since the May 13, 2026 GA4 release, Google automatically classifies referrals from recognized AI assistants (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and more) under a new 'AI Assistant' channel in the Default Channel Group. These sessions are tagged with medium 'ai-assistant' and campaign '(ai-assistant)'. Open Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition and group by Default Channel Group — the 'AI Assistant' row gives you sessions, users, and conversions out of the box. Searchlight's AI Visibility tab reads this channel directly when your property is on the rollout. Reference: support.google.com/analytics/answer/9164320 (May 13, 2026 release notes).
Custom Channel Grouping (fallback / extra coverage)
If your property hasn't received the May 2026 rollout yet, or you want to catch AI tools Google hasn't added to its native classifier, set up a Custom Channel Group: Admin → Data Display → Channel Groups. Add a channel 'AI Referrals' with condition Source matches regex .*(chatgpt|openai|perplexity|claude|anthropic|gemini\.google|copilot\.microsoft|grok|meta\.ai|deepseek|mistral|you\.com|phind|kagi|brave).* — move it above the default Referral channel. This applies retroactively to historical data.
GTM trigger using document.referrer (per-tool events)
Only needed if you want a per-tool event beyond what the native channel provides. Create a Custom JS variable 'AI Referrer' that returns the matched AI host or 'Not AI'. Add a Page View trigger where AI Referrer ≠ 'Not AI', and a GA4 Event tag firing 'ai_referral_visit' with parameter ai_tool = {{AI Referrer}}.
Google Search Console for AI Overviews & Discover
Search Console captures impressions/clicks from Google Search and Discover, which is the closest proxy for AI Overview / AI Mode citations. Performance → Search results filtered by URL gives per-page visibility in Google's AI surfaces.
This is NOT the same as bot tracking
Referrals = humans. Bot visits = GPTBot/ClaudeBot/PerplexityBot crawlers, which GA4 filters out. For those, see 'Track AI Bot Visits'. Also note: Gemini and Copilot still strip referrers in some flows, so a portion of true AI-referred visits can still land in 'Direct' regardless of the new channel.
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